Best Practices

The business cases and technical benefits for moving into
the cloud are the same for the government as they are for other firms, only the savings and challenges are much bigger. Government agencies have two special challenges: procurement and security. This article briefly describes the procurement challenges and then jumps into advising government cloud service purchasers on the
positives and negatives of security in the cloud, and how to manage their potential vendors' security risks.

Why should I be considering "the cloud"? There are hundreds of answers (if not more) for this question, but I think it is extremely valuable to have an answer aside from "because its what everybody is talking about". For some this may be to look for ways to reduce costs, or maybe a better way to put it is to become more efficient.

The information technology industry has fallen head over heels when it comes to cloud computing. Many analysts have weighed in on the inevitability of shutting down your outdated server room and shifting to services that are hosted on the Internet at a remote data center.

The Cloud Computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches1 each with their own approaches to exploiting the gains that cloud promises. In May 2010, a simple Web search of the term “Cloud Computing” returned over 14 million hits, creating an intractable task for any leader, team, or agency trying to define the cloud and adapt it to further their mission. This vendor-neutral white paper presents the concepts and application of Cloud Computing in the U.S. public sector and can be used as a starting point for formulating an agency’s cloud strategy.